


Game

by Llybian



Series: Summer Nights [7]
Category: Slayers (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Humor, I'll just seduce her, Language, Romance, Smoking, arm-wrestling, congratulations you played yourself, questionable plan, sexually frustrated dragon, wanna bet?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 10:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11849358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llybian/pseuds/Llybian
Summary: Xellos shrugged nonchalantly. “You couldn’t beat me,” he said.Filia’s scowl gained new intensity. If she was being cool-headed, which was a rare but not entirely unheard of state to find Filia in, then she might have reluctantly accepted this as true. But she wouldn’t now. Her pride was on the line and she was blinded by anger.





	1. Game

Xellos sat on the light brown sofa (with coral pink decorative pillows at either end) in the middle of Filia’s living room and watched her flurry of activity with an expression buffeting between amusement, puzzlement, and slight annoyance. She was currently grunting as she heaved a hutch with pears painted on the side of it from one wall to the opposite wall and doing her best to ignore him all the while.

He sipped his tea in mild irritation. He’d had to get it himself too. Filia had never been a very good hostess. Informing her of that had done nothing to improve her manners. Apparently she was much more content to move display cabinets from one perfectly reasonable position to another than she was to pay the slightest bit of attention to her guest.

Filia wiped the sweat from her brow as she brought the hutch to a rest. Then she abruptly turned to face Xellos with a determined glare and her hands on her hips.

“Move,” was all she said.

He looked upward as though he was weighing the matter. “No,” he said. “I’m quite comfortable here if it’s all the same to you.”

“It’s _not_ all the same to me!” Filia thundered. “I’m trying to rearrange the furniture in here and you’re just getting in the way.”

“I don’t see why you bother,” Xellos said calmly, taking another sip from his tea cup. “There was nothing wrong with the way the room looked before.”

“Oh _please_ ,” Filia said scornfully. “What would a monster know about interior decorating?”

Xellos raised an eyebrow and wondered what a _dragon_ would know about it.

“It really doesn’t look any better to me,” Xellos commented, looking around the partially rearranged room.

Filia looked around the room speculatively, the dreams of home improvement plans churning away in her mind. “It will when it’s done,” she said.

Xellos leaned forward. “Filia,” he said, “every time I come here the furniture is in a different configuration.”

Filia got this sort of look in her eye, like a recovering alcoholic caught with a bottle. “It’s— I just…” she began weakly.

“Don’t people trip over things with you constantly rearranging them?” Xellos wondered out loud.

“Not if they’re cognizant of their surroundings they don’t!” Filia answered in such a shrill, excuse-laden voice that Xellos was fairly certain he’d described an event that took place on a regular basis.

“Look,” Filia said, as though she was loathe to admit something but was being forced to, “I just… well, when I’ve had a stressful day I just… like to rearrange the furniture, okay? Don’t ask me why, but it makes me feel better.”

Xellos thought he could see the pathetic little philosophy that brought this about. It went something like: "I may not be able to control my life, but _damn it_ I can still control my living room!"

“You clearly have _way_ too much physical energy to expound,” he said. “You need a hobby.”

“There’s nothing wrong with moving furniture,” Filia said huffily as a crash from the other room signaled Jillas tripping over a footstool that hadn’t been there a few hours ago. She steadfastly ignored it. “It’s not like I’m in any danger of crushing myself with a wardrobe. I’m strong enough to handle it.”

“Oh yes,” Xellos said with a nasty little curl of his lip. “You dragons do tend to have a misplaced pride in your strength, don’t you?”

“It’s not misplaced!” Filia shot back. “I’m _very_ strong! I’ve won the county arm wrestling competition for all three years that I’ve lived here.”

“How impressive,” Xellos commented in a tone that was snickering behind the bleachers. “What an interesting image that brings to mind,” he added thoughtfully. “You, drunk in a bar at midnight, swindling ham-fisted sailors out of their hard earned money.”

“It wasn’t like that at all!” Filia snapped. “It was at the county fair, it was broad daylight, I was _completely_ sober, and no money changed hands.” She paused, thought for a moment, and then conceded: “There _were_ ham-fisted sailors, though.”

“And what did you win for this great accomplishment?” Xellos inquired.

“All-you-can-eat steaks from Tiberius’s T-bone House in the village square,” Filia said.

Xellos looked around her openly to her gluteus maximus. “I imagine that was quite a lot,” he said.

She threw the first thing she could lay her hands on at him, which turned out to be a porcelain pony. Xellos saw her wince as it broke pointlessly on the wall behind him. That was not something she’d wanted to break.

He watched her as she got out the dust-pan and gathered up the remnants of the erstwhile pretty pony and shoveled them into the garbage, muttering angrily all the while. Unlike her, he knew that strength wasn’t the most important thing. It was really about how you leveraged it.

He could see the pieces lining up…

“Of course,” he commented carefully, “I can’t really be sure you won honestly, can I?”

She straightened up immediately, turned around and scowled at him. “Are you _daring_ to imply that I cheated?”

“No, no,” Xellos said, waving away this accusation. “I just meant that it’s not hard to imagine a bunch of muscle-heads deciding to be sports and let the girl win.”

“They didn’t let me win!” Filia exclaimed. “They might have said that afterwards, but that’s just because they were embarrassed. I can beat anyone in this town easily!”

Xellos shrugged nonchalantly. “You couldn’t beat me,” he said.

Filia’s scowl gained new intensity. If she was being cool-headed, which was a rare but not entirely unheard of state to find Filia in, then she might have reluctantly accepted this as true. But she wouldn’t now. Her pride was on the line and she was blinded by anger.

And sure enough she walked purposefully over to the table (previously on the left wall, but now neatly tucked in a niche by the window), sat down, leaned her elbow on the table, and held out her hand. It was like a bear claw, waiting to strike down a salmon, deer, or unwary hiker. She gave him a challenging look.

Xellos just smiled. “I don’t think so, Filia,” he said.

“Why?” she barked. “Scared you might lose?”

“No,” Xellos said. “I’m so certain that I’ll win that honestly it’s too boring to be worth bothering.”

“You were the one who said I couldn’t beat you,” Filia reminded. “You _have_ to defend that.”

“I don’t have to defend anything,” Xellos said unconcernedly. “But if you’re really going to insist on this then it might work as long as we made it more interesting.”

“Interesting?” Filia repeated guardedly.

“A game is always more fun with a wager,” Xellos said, looking into his tea as he swished it from side to side as if he wasn’t paying much mind to the conversation.

Filia glowered at him as though trying to figure out what he was up to. After coming up with fairly little she finally said: “What could you possibly want out of me?”

Xellos noted with interest that this wasn’t merely a scornful statement. Oh, there was plenty of scorn in it. But it was definitely a question. As in, she really wanted to know what he wanted out of her.

“Nothing really,” he said.

Filia gave a derisive snort.

Xellos broke his eye-contact with the tea, to peer at her. “Well, it’s not as though there’s any use in you.”

Filia finally quit her pre-arm wrestling pose in order to cross her arms. “If I’m so _useless_ ,” she shot back, “then why are you always hanging around here?”

Xellos grinned. “ _Because_ if I didn’t show up, you’d have no healthy way to relieve all that frustration you’re so good at accumulating and eventually rearranging furniture wouldn’t be enough for you to deal with it so you’d snap and end up as a performer in some sort of underground mud wrestling competition.”

Filia made a face at him. “You have a disgusting mind!” she declared. “And anyway, you’re the cause of my frustration!”

“Well, we all know _that_ ,” Xellos said cheerfully.

Filia’s brow furrowed as though she wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that. But she didn’t appear to be willing to spend much time dwelling on it, as she rolled her eyes and said: “What kind of wager did you have in mind anyway?”

Xellos could practically hear the gears clicking into place. “Oh, I didn’t really have anything in mind,” he said unconcernedly. “I can’t really think of anything I want from you right now. What about you, Filia?” He looked up at her. “Was there something you wanted from me?”

Even from across the room, Xellos could see the giant, jittering shudder work its way up from Filia’s toes. “No!” she yelled. “Why would I want anything from you?”

Xellos wagged an admonishing finger at her. “It was only a question, Filia. No need to get so excited.”

He took a long drink out of his tea while Filia stewed in her anger at the table. “How about this,” he finally said. “Let’s make the bet be that the loser owes the winner a favor. That way it doesn’t matter that neither of us can think of anything right now.”

“A favor?” Filia repeated, suspicion-level sky-rocketing.

“Oh, nothing too extreme,” Xellos assured her. “I wouldn’t have you kill a baby or blow up a temple or anything. Nothing you’d never be able to bring yourself to do. Just… a favor when the time comes that it might be needed.”

Xellos watched Filia’s face as the flickers in her expression revealed her thought process. She was still suspicious. She didn’t believe for a moment that he hadn’t already lined up what he wanted her to do in his mind. And she was certain that she wouldn’t approve of whatever it was. On the other hand, she realized the possible potential that having Xellos owe her a favor could have. She would do anything now to protect her adopted son, and in a world where dragons and monsters might one day decide to knock off the fledgling survivor of his race… well, having a chance for a favor from Xellos seemed like something to good to pass up.

And then there was the most important part. _She’d_ issued the challenge. If she said no now then she’d be a coward.

“Fine!” she said, removing her glove, rolling up her sleeve, and once again getting into arm-wrestling position.

Showing absolutely no respect for her determination or getting into the spirit of the thing at all, Xellos strode lazily over to the table with his teacup in hand, set it down on the table, and only then did he put his gloved hand around hers.

“Count of three?” he asked. Filia nodded.

“One, two, three!” they said together.

Filia’s arm quivered as she drew on the massive force of her dragon form, locked away beneath her human appearance, and slammed it against Xellos’s arm.

Which. Didn’t. Move. A. Centimeter.

She ground her teeth together and continued to push, hammering against her muscles to make them give out something more. As Xellos watched her with a faint smile that he knew was positively killing her, he saw that the thing that bothered her most was that he wasn’t even trying.

To add insult to injury, he reached over with his other hand, picked up his tea cup, and took a drink as she continued in her tireless, but futile effort to topple his arm.

After a moment he saw her tentatively reach up her other hand and then pull it away.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Try it. I really don’t mind.”

She hesitated and then swallowed her pride and added her other hand. But even pushing with both hands she still couldn’t beat him.

Xellos wondered vaguely how long she’d go before something got dislocated. But he was going to wait until her strength ran out before he made the winning strike. She had to _learn_ that she couldn’t win against him.

He watched as she winced, one eye closed in concentration while she continued to push. She wouldn’t give up as long as there was strength left in her. She was breathing heavily and vocalizing her pained efforts. Her forehead was shiny with sweat, and her hands slippery against his gloved one.

She didn’t even notice as he leaned forward, tilted his head, and put his lips against hers.

Shock poured off her as her eyes flew open and the grip on his hand instantly weakened. It increased immediately when he pressed onward, as though she needed to hold onto him. As he raised the hand that wasn’t holding hers to caress her cheek, she instantly let her face fall into it, as though too tired to resist.

They remained like that for awhile, kissing in the sunlight that filtered in from the curtain windows and onto the table (which really did look much better in the niche), their arms still frozen in positions of combat. Something like this probably wasn’t mentioned in the World Arm-Wrestling Federation’s playbook, but Xellos thought he had a pretty good argument that it counted as an improvisational distraction technique.

Xellos watched her intently as they pulled apart. She was breathless, weary, and unsure what to do next. Her eyes sparked with that captivating combination of guilt and lust. It was… a powerful thing to be able to put her in that state.

A _thlunk_ sound drew Xellos’s eyes down to the table. Both her hands lay over his, pinned to the table. He looked back up at her.

“I…” she began, barely able to get the words out. “I win.”


	2. Terms & Conditions

“She beat you,” Beastmaster Zelas summed up after her singular servant finished relating the unfortunate results of his arm-wrestling match with the ex-dragon priestess he insisted on spending so much time with.

“That appears to be the case,” Xellos admitted in a tone with a chipper candy-coating and a nervous chocolate-center. “It seems I underestimated her focus.”

Zelas took a pull of her pipe and watched as the smoke billowed upwards. Losing a contest of strength against someone who is legitimately weaker than you generally indicates that they have some mental leverage against you. Xellos was supposed to be _good_ at mental leverage. Which made this… interesting… but nevertheless troublesome.

“So you now owe a golden dragon–a former priestess, no less–a favor,” she said, letting this unpleasant fact and all its implications sink to the floor.

“That is true,” Xellos confessed. “She can’t ask me for _anything_. We agreed that it couldn’t be anything too extreme,” he said, holding up a finger. “However,” he admitted, “the terms and conditions of the arrangement _are_ rather vague.”

“You made them vague on purpose so you could exploit them later,” Zelas pointed out.

“Well, of course,” Xellos admitted unabashedly.

“And what would your dragon girl ask of you?” Zelas asked, giving the matter some thought.

“I don’t think she knows,” Xellos said. “Her strategy is most likely to save the favor for a time when her or her son’s life is in danger.”

“And who knows, when that time comes, what operations that would interfere with,” Zelas said, narrowing her eyes. “Can’t you just go back on the bargain?” she asked, leaning over to take a sip from a martini glass containing a highly toxic, sweet blue liquid with a chemical make-up very similar to antifreeze.

“I could,” Xellos said.

“But you don’t want to?” Zelas said, raising an eyebrow.

“I thoroughly intended on Filia being the one owing me a favor,” Xellos explained. “Her holy magic could be useful for breaking seals. And of course, there’s the magical fusion element to think of.”

“And if you try to bet with her again after going back on your first deal, she’ll feel no responsibility to keep up her end of the bargain,” Zelas deduced wearily. Certainly there would be some use in a golden dragon being in Xellos’s debt. But Lord Beastmaster tended to think he was rather stuck on the idea. Probably some kind of psychology going on there.

“But I have a plan to dissipate the favor I owe her harmlessly so it won’t be an unknown to worry about in the future,” Xellos announced.

“Oh?” Zelas asked, taking a drink. _This should be good_.

“I’ll just seduce her,” Xellos said.

_Yes, definitely some kind of psychology,_ Zelas decided.

“I think the events of the contest have proven this to be a strategy she’ll be susceptible to,” he added, realizing on that stare that his grand scheme needed some explaining.

Zelas was not above letting her subordinate run into brick walls of his own making. At least when it was of no harm to her. She liked to think it taught valuable lessons.

She blew a smoke tesseract because smoke rings are for chumps. “Knock yourself out,” she said.

*****

It was when Filia started carrying the sofa upstairs that Jillas and Gravos decided it might be best to take Val to the park and give Filia some alone time. Filia had a history of rearranging furniture when she was upset, but lately it bordered on the maniacal. To walk in the house in darkness was to invite _death_. Something must have _really_ gotten her upset to get her like this.

She’d brought all the paintings from downstairs and swapped them with the ones upstairs, which was fine because it’s always nice to change one’s surroundings. She had to admit that moving the guest wardrobe down to the living room was a mistake. It definitely blocked out the light coming through the window. But she’d felt fresh all over after she moved it.

…For about two minutes. Now she was looking for something else to move.

_Oh! The suede easy chair!_ She thought, moving towards the dining room where the chair in question had been temporarily located. With a little weather-proofing that would be _perfect_ out on the second floor balcony. She just had to find her tool box and maybe some shower curtains and—

_Oh, son of a bitch!_ Filia thought, her anger overpowering the swear filter in her mind, as she entered the dining room to find an unwelcomed guest on her suede easy chair.

“Good afternoon, Filia,” Xellos said from his perch. “It seems that your irrational redecorating attempts have accelerated in my absence.” He tilted his head to the side. “I wonder what could have caused you such stress since I left.”

_You know exactly what it is, you jerk!_ her mind screamed at him. It was all his fault for kissing her. And he’d only done it to _be_ a jerk too. Just to rub in her face how weak she was compared to him.

Much as she hated to admit it, it had been all she could do not to melt into a little puddle on the floor when that happened. She put all of her strength against him as her only way of fighting against the sensations caused by the force invading her.

She hadn’t actually expected it to work.

“Get out of here, you monster!” she demanded, ignoring his opening line. “I’m not in the mood to deal with you right now!”

Xellos raised an eyebrow. “Should I come back when you’re more in the mood?”

“That would be: never!” she shouted back. “Now go away! I’m too busy to play anymore of your stupid games.”

“Busy doing pointless manual labor so you don’t have to think about your real problems,” Xellos summed up coolly. “How dare I interrupt?”

“Yes,” Filia said, agreeing emphatically with his sarcasm. “How dare you?”

“How can I leave, Filia,” he asked, “when I still owe you a favor?”

Filia was tempted to tell him to do her a favor and _get lost_ , but that would be a waste of a good favor. Besides, it might be impossible; Xellos always seemed to know where he was.

“I don’t want anything from you right now,” she said, her arms crossed. “There’s no rule that says I have to use the favor now.”

“Yes,” Xellos conceded. “But you _could_ use it now.”

“I could,” Filia said through gritted teeth, starting to get really frustrated at this point. “But I! Don’t! Want to!”

Xellos surveyed her shuddering rage. “Oh, that’s right, I forgot,” he said. “Your life is completely perfect.”

And it was at this moment that Filia became painfully aware that she was sweating, her hair was frizzing madly in the humidity, the dining room table was taking up the entire upstairs bathroom, and her son’s crib was in the kitchen.

She ran a hand through her messy hair and tried to recover from this unpleasant dose of reality. “Anything you could do,” she gulped, “would only make my life worse.”

He stared at her for a moment, then held out his gloved hand. “Care to test that?”

Filia stared at his hand knowing all too well that good and sensible people do not take monsters up on their dubious offers of happiness. There was a pull, a horrified curiosity that wasn’t nearly as horrified as she thought it ought to be. But she couldn’t help but feel that this was more than just a deal with the devil.

_What is he… offering?_

She blushed and automatically turned away. “No!” she shouted. “No I wouldn’t.”

She heard him get up and stand behind her but couldn’t bring herself to face him.

“So,” she heard him say, “when I was kissing you and you were nuzzling your face into my hand, did that mean you _didn’t_ like it?”

She whipped around to look at him, her face awash with anger and retorted: “You’re the one who was kissing me! I think it’s pretty clear that _you’re_ the one who liked it!”

Xellos shrugged. “Of course I did.”

Filia was taken aback. She’d honestly expected him to deny it and shift the focus back on her again. It would’ve been so like him to say that her reasoning of ‘he kissed me because he likes kissing me’ was utterly illogical and simply proved her to be the stupid, conclusion-jumping-to dragon that she was.

“What?” she practically whispered.

“Well, it was a pleasurable experience,” he said simply, causing something to go _twang_ under Filia’s ribcage. “If I denied something so clearly true then that could only mean that I was hiding something important from myself,” he added in a holier-than-thou tone that was rather ironic on a demon.

“I don’t love you, if that’s what you mean!” Filia shouted. Then she realized she might have responded to quickly.

Xellos arched an eyebrow. “I never said you did.”

“Well you were implying it!” she shot back. “You’re always implying things,” she growled darkly.

Xellos gave her a "you are ridiculous" look. “Filia, if you want me to kiss you again then you just have to ask.”

Filia opened her mouth and drew in a breath, the look on her face clearly screaming: "there are no words to describe the line you just crossed."

“What?” he said. “That wasn’t an implication. It was a fairly direct accusation.”

“I don’t want you to kiss me!” she finally exploded out. “I don’t know how you can even say something so awful like it’s no big deal!”

“And anyway,” she snapped, “why is it always on me? You just keep going on with your ‘Oh, Filia, _you_ want this. It’s all _you_.’ when _you’re_ the one that admitted to liking the kiss in the first place. Why don’t you just try honesty for once in your life, if only for the novelty of it, and say ‘Can I kiss you because _I_ want to?’ It’s at least a less obnoxious strategy!”

“…Can I kiss you because I want to?” he tried cautiously.

“No!” Filia yelled.

“But you said—”

“I _said_ it was a less obnoxious strategy. I didn’t say I’d say yes,” Filia said, cutting across him.

“I don’t even know why you’re bothering with this,” Filia said, mostly to herself. “I mean, it’s not like you felt the need to debate me about it last time. You just went ahead anyway and I was too shocked to…” She looked up into Xellos’s open eyes.

_Oh crap. That was out loud_.

He reached a hand slowly over to her. She flinched, but didn’t move away when it ran through her hair. He moved her closer to him and kissed her.

And this time there wasn’t a table between them or a contest of strength on hold. This time he pulled her down with him onto the nice suede chair that she’d only recently been considering covering with a shower curtain and putting outside, and running his hand up her leg.

“Xellos,” she breathed out in a panic as his lips left hers and ran across her neck.

“What?” he answered, sounding irritated at this interruption.

“The,” she began–she couldn’t believe she was saying this, “the bedroom is upstairs.” Thank the gods she hadn’t moved the bed. Only because she couldn’t fit it out the door (which raised questions about how it got in there in the first place).

He looked up into her half-closed eyes for about ten seconds. “That’s interesting,” he said, and then continued doing the work of the decades by raising her hemline.

“ _Xellos!_ ”

“Oh, alright,” he relented, scooping her into his arms and carrying her upstairs.

*****

Filia lay in bed some time later plagued with guilt, absolutely sure that she’d made a decision she would regret intensely later. On the other hand, she no longer felt any desire to move furniture.

“It’s almost a shame I only owed you one favor,” Xellos said pensively, watching her from the other side of the bed.

“What do you mean ‘owed?'” Filia asked, barely getting back her sharpness after what had transpired between them. “You don’t honestly think this counts as the favor, do you?”

“Well, of course it does,” Xellos said, but he sounded just a little unsure.

“I never said anything about a favor,” Filia said. “You were the one going on and on about it after I said no.”

Xellos looked like he was thinking fast. “Are you _sure_ you didn’t say anything about a favor?”

“Yes!” Filia insisted. Like she’d actually sacrifice a possible get-out-of-death-free card to satisfy her own obviously insane and morally reprehensible desires!

“Perhaps you might have moaned something about it while we were—”

Storm clouds rolled across Filia’s expression. “ _No._ ”

“—something along the lines of _‘Oh, Xellos! Oh yes! This definitely counts as a favor!_ ’ perhaps?” he tried.

Thunder rumbled from the metaphorical mass of cumulonimbus. “I think you should leave now,” she said threateningly.

“…So that’s a ‘no?’”

“GET OUT!”

*****

“It didn’t work,” Zelas said leadenly. “How shocking.”

“I’m afraid so, Lord Beastmaster,” Xellos answered contritely. “I confess there were some matters I didn’t take into account.

_Like the entire plan_ , Zelas thought as she picked up a mug containing her new favorite drink. It was something she’d borrowed from the deepest dungeon of the Atlas City Sorcerer’s Guild where the sorcerers would be horrified to find it missing. It wasn’t in a pretty container because it was only an inch thick layer of an alloy of orihalcon and magnetized iron that was keeping the radioactive sludge inside from eating through its container and dissolving through the world until it came out the other side. She’d placed an orange wedge rather jauntily on the rim of the mug.

“But I have another plan that should fix everything,” Xellos announced.

“Does it involve having sex with her again?” Zelas asked almost boredly, taking a swig of the radioactive slurry.

“…Sort of,” Xellos admitted.

“Do tell.”

“Well,” Xellos said, determined to explain his plan but nevertheless now slightly less confident in it, “now that Filia and I have already had sex she’ll be much more likely to want it in the future. I simply have to withhold it until the time that she asks for it as part of our deal.”

Zelas stared at him. A catastrophic meltdown was narrowly avoided as a spark from her pipe just barely missed her drink.

“Xellos,” she finally said, because it didn’t seem like he’d figure this out any time soon, “I think that the events of the past few days have spelled out in the clearest of terms that you just don’t have the willpower.”


End file.
